Firms, researchers, and other organizations increasingly use electronic surveys to gather data concerning target populations or to obtain feedback from customers. With increased access to the Internet, the rise of mobile phones, and the growing popularity of social media, these organizations have greater ability to distribute electronic surveys to potential respondents. Those potential respondents in turn have greater access to respond to electronic surveys. At the same time, firms increasingly provide users with software applications and other tools to create electronic surveys that can be distributed through a variety of platforms over computer networks.
Along with the increased popularity of electronic surveys have come some drawbacks to the ease and facility that electronic surveys offer. In contrast to in-person surveys, for example, some conventional electronic survey systems contain weaknesses that potential respondents can exploit to misrepresent the identity of the respondent. For instance, the digital aspect of electronic surveys and the ease with which answers can be electronically transmitted poses an authentication problem unique to electronic survey systems and the computer devices through which respondents provide answers (e.g., mobile devices or personal computers).
Indeed, in some contexts, accurately identifying and authenticating the identity of a survey respondent may be critical to the survey administrator. For example, a hospital who seeks feedback or other data from current or former patients may find it important to ensure that a survey respondent has actually visited or received treatment from the hospital. A pharmaceutical company may likewise find it important to authenticate the identity of a survey respondent when the responses to an electronic survey will be submitted to a government agency as part of an application for approval to distribute or market a drug. As another example, a marketing firm may find it critical to authenticate that survey respondents are within a certain demographic or have previously purchased certain products when using an electronic survey to gather information about an audience's response to certain products or an advertising campaign. Accordingly, organizations often find it critical to accurately authenticate the identity of a survey respondent when spending significant amounts of money on health treatments, government agency review, or advertising campaigns that can often depend on the results of an electronic survey.
Despite the importance to some organizations of authenticating the identity of a respondent to an electronic survey, conventional electronic survey systems often lack features that allow a survey administrator to collect accurate data concerning a survey respondent's identity or mechanisms to authenticate the collected data. Moreover, conventional electronic survey systems typically lack mechanisms for the survey administrator to authenticate biographical data associated with a particular survey respondent. Consequently, computers with software applications or artificial intelligence capabilities can sometimes respond to an electronic survey by exploiting the ineffective authentication mechanisms of conventional electronic surveys. With ineffective authentication mechanisms, conventional electronic survey systems can produce unreliable or otherwise erroneous survey response data.
Additionally, conventional methods of authenticating the identity of a user on a computer network are often unsuitable for electronic surveys. For example, some authentication methods allow an administrator to authenticate the identity of a potential user by sending a hyperlink embedded within an email to a user. Other authentication methods allow a potential user to log into a website by using profile credentials from a social media account. Yet other authentication methods provide a potential user with unique login credentials. These conventional authentication methods are often unsuitable for electronic surveys because they intrude on the potential user's email or social media accounts, introduce additional security concerns by exposing login credentials for personal accounts, or add insufficient measures of identifying the identity of a potential survey respondent. Given these deficiencies, conventional authentication methods may decrease response rates or introduce fraudulent or inaccurate responses into the results of an electronic survey.
Accordingly, these and other disadvantages decrease the utility and security of conventional systems and methods for providing electronic surveys.